Argh! We have a new batch of updates for ye! We've made some decent progress this month as we've been hurrying to wrap up the business issues. Dakota has also been finishing up a freelance contract he started before the Kickstarter, once that is out of the way things should speed up even more.

​ Right now our main goal is to get the game back to the state it was in during the Kickstarter while also adding in some of the basic new features we've been planning as we go.

Paypal Extension Results!

We were able to raise an additional $14,489.29USD to help with the development of Blackwake! Thank you everyone. This will help go towards outsourcing music/art and improve the quality of the game.

Rewrite

As you all know Blackwake was a mess two years in the making at the time of the Kickstarter. This was a result of on/off development and rushing to get the game presentable and playable so we could pitch the idea. As a result we're now working on rewriting nearly all of it. At the same time we're switching to a new networking solution that is still in beta, and working closely with its developers as we move forward.

The rewrite is progressing well, here is where we are as far as rewritten features go:

Player sync + interpolation

Player animation support

​Chatbox

Destruction

Cannonballs

Grappling

Ticket/time HUD

Sinking

Player damage

Player death + ragdoll camera

Respawning

Climbing

Swimming

FPS weapon system (so far only the pistol set up)

We're nearing the end of the rewrite, as many of these features listed above share core functionality with the rest of the game and needed to be written to account for that in the future.

Music

Garrett has been a bit busy with other matters this month, but he has been finishing up our newest track:

Proximity voice chat

In Blackwake we will have two forms of communication, text chat and voice chat. Voice will have 3 categories:

Proximity - Your voice will be broadcasted in a radius around you, to both friendlies and enemiesFaction (Captain only) - Used by captains to talk with other friendly captainsGlobal - For players to annoy/trash talk each other and play music over the microphone

We will also have a set of mute options you can take advantage of if need be.

For now we have finished proximity chat and have it implemented, with global and faction coming soon (they require a display). Here is one of our test videos while making it:

Captain voting

We've began roughing out how captain nomination and voting will work. Players will be able to nominate themselves and also include a personalized note to display during voting. We will have more information on what dictates your captain rating in the future, but rest assured it will allow new players the opportunity to become captain. Keep in mind captains can be overthrown with a mutiny vote at any point during the match.

Volumetric smoke

We had some time while waiting on networking patches to work towards something we thought would help the visuals of Blackwake greatly, volumetric smoke.

This system is still in it's testing phases, but we do have it in the game currently. Some things about it may be changed though (see: hideous shadows from the smoke).

left: standard right: volumetric

Art

After redoing all of our textures to fit with a better version of physically based shading, we've been able to begin making progress on new weapons. Here are some of the gold weapon skins and a new pistol, the duckfoot.

November

By the end of November we hope to have the rewrite completed. Afterwards we will begin testing multiplayer internally, as many of the current features have not been tested for proper synchronization and there will be bugs to work out. Finally we can then begin moving on to Steam integration and working towards eventual distribution to our backers, which we are quite excited for.

Thanks for reading, we hope to see you in the next update! If you have any questions or just want to comment on the update be sure to visit our Reddit post below! :)